


Green

by Jasontoddjr



Series: Of needles and clowns [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, batfam is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 01:19:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11567325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jasontoddjr/pseuds/Jasontoddjr
Summary: Jason Todd used to love everything green. But that was a lifetime ago.





	Green

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a hurry without proper research and a dictionary so forgive me my mistakes.

Of all the colours the idiots painting the house next to the building he has a safe house in, they had to go for green. He hated green. Green was the Joker’s colour, his sickening laugh resonating endlessly in his brain. Green was the Lazarus’ fire, burning in his veins, tinting his vision in a green haze whenever he let his control slip. 

He used to love green though, a lifetime ago (literally). Green was the colour of the grass in the immaculate garden where Bruce had taught him how to play baseball. Green was the colour of the leaves of the huge walnut tree that towered over the west side of the manor, during spring. Green was the colour of Robin, the best thing that had happened to him in his quite miserable life.

Green was the colour of the Mazda Demio Bruce was planning on giving him for his 16th birthday. He never lived to see that day, but he had been nagging Bruce to enrol him in a driving school and he’d been told he was “too young and brash”, yet he discovered the brand-new car under a cover a few days later. 

Cassandra had told him that Bruce had painted the car himself. And when he voiced his confusion as to why a Mazda (Brucie was too classy to own a cheap, indistinct Mazda), she had explained that it was the safest and most efficient car for a new driver. That confession made his heart clench in that familiar yearning he has been trying to suppress for years now. 

He barged into the cave next day demanding Bruce to give him his car. All a bewildered Bruce could say was a confused “What?” He walked through the maze of a garage until he spotted the cover he’s seen before. He uncovered the car, inhaled sharply as he took in the shiny, spotless neon green car. Bruce put a hand on his shoulder and silently handed him the keys. He angrily shrugged Bruce’s hand of and he drove straight to Cass and Stephanie’s place. They opened the door after much honking and he smirked at them and said “Get in losers we’re going shopping.” Cassandra beamed and Stephanie’s face was a priceless mix of awe and suppressed laughter. At that moment, his head was clear of all doubt and Bruce-induced-anger (just being near the man still made his blood boil most of the time).

He gave the car to Cassandra after two disastrous driving lessons he had given her. He only liked the car when the girls were with him anyway. Not because the green paint in the dim light of his garage reminded him of one syllable repeated over and over again, on the dark wall of a warehouse somewhere far in the desert. Not because that syllable was repeated in his head over and over again into the twisted laughter of that sick clown. No, the Red Hood simply didn’t drive around in a flashy green car.

When he finally started visiting the manor enough to actually put some of his stuff over there and after much persuasion of Alfred (he swears that man is a master manipulator), he decided to “revamp” his room.  
He packed his old clothes in a few duffel bags and distributed them to a few warehouses he knew were occupied by some scrawny street kids. He decided the furniture was old but still functional and giving it away would be a waste. He didn’t need the extra cost of having to buy new furniture and he’d rather die again than use Bruce’s money. He was no charity case anymore and being in someone’s debt meant giving up some control over his life. His old school books he donated to a local public school in downtown. His other books, mostly novels and some fairy tales he had hidden from the disdainful eye of Dick Perfect Grayson, he decided to keep. 

The only thing that still disturbed him was the sickening colour of his bedroom walls. The light green walls ware mocking him from four directions. He could almost hear them laughing at him, a high-pitched laughter he strongly associated with a crowbar, a clown and everything green. 

He vaguely remembers a 13-year-old him wearing an overall so big half of the sleeves and legs had to be rolled up to free his hands and feet. Alfred had looked as pristine and composed in his overall stained with green paint as in his shining butler tuxedo. Ha had picked up the paint himself from a catalogue so thick the shades of green alone took up almost thirty pages. He had spent days browsing the catalogue, unable to decide what shade he wanted (there had never been a question about the colour) until Bruce was fed up with him and had threatened to paint his room hospital white.

Standing in that same room in his 21-year-old glory he cursed his younger self. Out of the 50 shades of green, did he really have to pick one close to Joker’s hair colour? He quickly dismissed that thought. He was not naïve enough to think a different shade would spare him his PTSD-induced fears. The neighbour’s house was dark green and his heart still skipped a beat when he walked past it. That doesn’t mean he was going to lie down and watch as his stupidly green walls enclosed around him, as if the joker was pushing him back in his grave.

That’s how he ended up in an overall covered with green stains, a size or two too small, barely covering his lower arms and not reaching his ankles, in a bedroom that had been locked for almost a decade, in a manor that he had once proudly called his home.  
That night he slept like a baby, in a bedroom he spent the best part of his life in, full with the books he loved and a bed that was as soft as a mother’s long forgotten touch, with walls that were a beautiful shade of red that didn’t remind him of who he was anymore and what he’s lost, but who he is now and what he still can do.


End file.
